ISRAEL LEARNING SEMINARS
(2013-2014)
Taking Back The Campus!
Goals of the CIJR Israel Learning Seminars
North American campuses have, since the first (1987-88) and second (2000) Palestinian Arab “intifadas”, become the scene of increasingly well-organized and effective anti-Israel agitation and propaganda. This campaign on the part of radical Arab and left-wing student groups, often supported by “progressive” faculty, is reinforced by a steady stream of invited anti-Israel and anti-Zionist speakers. Recently it has been marked by economic boycott and “divestment” initiatives (e.g., “Israeli Apartheid Week”) modeled after the earlier anti-South African “apartheid” movement.
Jewish students, often isolated and not well-supported by on-campus Jewish organized-community agencies (which tend to shy away from “conflict” ), have increasingly lost the campus initiative. Our students, lacking in specific historical and political knowledge, are often politically naïve and inexperienced, and deficient as well in debating and organizing skills. They are caught off-balance and out-maneuvered by seemingly well-informed, morally aggressive, organizationally savvy and well-financed opponents.
It is time we took back the campus such implicit, and often explicit, antisemitic defamation, with its never-absent aura of aggressive and violent confrontation, violates the very basis of the modern Western university. This remarkable, and fragile, Western institution, devoted to free inquiry and the pursuit of truth, must not be compromised, or destroyed.
Our campuses today are not “ivory towers”, but, scenes of practical political and ideological and policy-making give-and-take of immense “real-world” importance, and this has everything to do with the well-being of the Jewish state. CIJR’s Student Israel-Advocacy Program is designed to take back the campus, by empowering Jewish and interested non-Jewish students, through the acquisition of crucial historical-political knowledge concerning the Jewish People, Zionism, and the State of Israel in its Middle East context.
Through developing such knowledge, along with critically-important speaking, writing and on-campus organizing skills, we hope to stem the tide of anti-Israelism and antisemitism on campus. As such, we hope too to become a nodal point in the battle to defend, not only Israel and the Jewish community, but also, modern liberal Western society.
SIAP SYLLABUS, 2013-2014
Syllabus: This Syllabus lays out the annual learning program of the SIAP Program. It sets out regular meeting times for the Program’s constituent Seminars, Colloquia.
Seminars: The roughly tri-weekly Seminars are the core of this program, and meet at CIJR’s office (1396 St. Catherine St. West,# 218) every third Wednesday beginning at the start of the Fall semester from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The key responsibility of students committed to the SIAP is regularly to attend seminars and to prepare the indicated required reading and audio-visual assignments.
Readings: Required and Optional Readings materials are indicated for each Seminar. At the first meetingparticipants will be asked to look ahead and choose a 10 minute Seminar report, and to defend it in the relevant Seminar. All participants will also be asked to research and write one article on a topic related to a given Seminar subject, to be published in CIJR’s student-written Dateline: Middle East magazine.
Colloquia: SIAP-related Colloquia, at least one for each semester, given by outstanding academics and specialists on themes related to the individual Seminars, are scheduled. Colloquia will take place on a Sunday morning from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon. A possibility for 2012-13 is an expenses-defrayed Jerusalem Colloquium.
Practicum: One Colloquium (mid-March) is specifically focused on addressing media distortions and developing speaking/debating, writing, and organizing skills. It should be noted however, that these issues will be addressed continuously, inall Seminars and meetings (e.g., through Seminar oral reports, discussion and debate, essays, and optional article-writing for Dateline:Middle East, etc., as well as through the practical exigencies of addressing on-campus issues across the year).
READING LIST: Required = material provided by the SIAP Program in the form of the SIAP Reader;Supplementary/Optional = important additional materials, to be consulted if possible, and used in the preparation of Seminar reports and Dateline: Middle East article preparation. All required material is posted on CIJR’s website. (www.isranet/SIAP) and reserve copies of all indicated texts, Required and Supplementary, are available for consultation in the SIAP section of the CIJR library in Montreal.
Additional Materials
- Bard, M., Myths and Facts. A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 2001 ed.
- Berger, D., Editor, History and Hate. The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism
- Dershowitz, Alan,The Case for Israel
- Epstein, I., Judaism
- Fackenheim, Emil, What is Judaism?
- Grayzel, Solomon, A History of the Jews, 5728-1968, 1-vol. revised ed. [1968]
- Hazony, Yoram, The Jewish State. The Struggle for Israel’s Soul
- Karsh, Efraim, Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians”, The Arab-Israeli Conflict. The Palestine 1948 War (Oxford, Osprey, 2002)
- Katz, Shmuel, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine
- Laqueur, Walter, The History of Zionism
- Lewis, Bernard, What Went Wrong? ___________ ., The Crisis of Islam
- Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, J., eds., The Jew in the Modern World, 2nd ed.
- Bernard Reich, A Brief History of Israel (NY: Checkmark Books, 2005)
- Rubin, B. & Laqueur, W., The Israel-Arab Reader, 7th ed.
- Schoenfeld, G., The Return of Antisemitism
- O’Brien,Conor Cruise, The Siege
- Wistrich, Robert S., Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism – From Antiquity to the Global Jihad
- Wisse, Ruth, Jews and Power
- International Conference on Global Dimensions of Contemporary Antisemitism DVDs.
SYLLABUS
1st SEMESTER
1. Wednesday, October 23, 2013 @ 5:30 pm :
JUDAISM & THE JEWISH PEOPLE (TO 18TH C.)
Instructor: Prof. Ira Robinson (Judaic Studies, Concordia U.)
Cohen,M. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages,
Ch. 3 & 4, pp.33-74
2. Wednesday, November 13, 2013
MODERNITY, ZIONISM, YISHUV (TO 1914)
Instructor: Prof. Frederick Krantz (Liberal Arts College, Concordia U.)
/wp-content/themes/isranet/files/Documents/Reading-%20Oct.%2024,%202012.pdf
Required Readings:
— Selections from Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, J., eds.,
The Jew in the Modern World, 2nd ed.:
Chapter I, pp. 8-9,
Abbé Grégoire “An Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political
Reformation of the Jews” (1789), pp. 49-54;
Chapter III, Introduction pp. 112-113,
French National Assembly “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen” pp.114-116,
French National Assembly “The Emancipation of the Jews of France”
pp. 118;
Chapter VI, Introduction, pp. 249,
Heinrich Heine “A Ticket of Admission to European Culture” pp 258-259,
Ludwig Boerne “Because I Am a Jew I Love Freedom” pp. 259-260,
Rachel von Varnhagen “O How Painful to Have Been Born a Jewess!”
pp. 260-261, Rosa Luxemburg “No Room in My Heart for Jewish
Suffering” pp. 261-262, Isaac Deutscher “The Non-Jewish Jew”
pp. 265-266;
Chapter VII, Introduction,pp. 302-303,
Johann Gottlieb Fichte “A State Within a State” pp. 309-310,
Bruno Bauer “The Jewish Problem” pp. 321-324,
Richard Wagner “Jewry in Music” pp. 327-331,
Wilhelm Marr “The Victory of Judaism over Germandom” pp. 331-333,
Karl Eugen Duehring “The Question of the Jew Is a Question of Race”
pp. 333-334,
Houston Stewart Chamberlain “The Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century” pp. 356-359,
“Protocols of the Elders of Zion” pp. 363-367;
Chapter VIII, Introduction, pp. 372-374;
“Awaiting a Pogrom”, pp. 408;
N. Tchaykovsky “The Massacre of Jews a Kishinev”, p. 409;
Haim Nahman Bialik “The City of Slaughter”, pp. 410-411;
“The Beilis Trial”, pp. 412-413;
Chapter X, pp.529-31;The Bilu, “Manifesto”, 532;
Theodor Herzl “A Solution of the Jewish Question”, pp.533-37;
“Proclamation of the State of Israel pp. 629-630
3. Wednesday, January 15, 2013 at 5:30 pm at the CIJR office
ISRAEL ON CAMPUS: ANTISEMITISM, & ADVOCACY
Instructor: Barbara Kay (CIJR fellow & Op Editor, National Post)
Required Readings:
“Why Israel Gets Spun” by Hillel Halkin,
“The Media and the Dysfunctions of the 21st Century: Address at the 7th
Annual Herzliya Conference” by Richard Landes,
“The Media Works for Hizbullah: Working for the Enemy” by Tom Gross,
“All the News That’s Fit to Print?” by Tom Gross,
“Bad News Bears: Gerstenfeld and Colleagues Show How Bad Spin Works
against Anyone” by Richard Landes,
“Major Antisemitic Motifs in Arab Cartoons”, with Joel Kotek
Readings:
/wp-content/themes/isranet/files/Documents/Reading%20for%20Nov.%2014.pdf
2ND SEMESTER
See attached reading:
Required Readings:
– Laqueur, Walter and Barry Rubin, eds., The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary
History of the Middle East Conflict (2001):
p.16, Balfour Declaration;
p. 25, Churchill White Paper;
p. 30, Mandate;
p. 41, Palestine Royal Commission;
p. 44, White Paper;
p. 55, Biltmore Program;
p. 65, UNSCOP;
p. 69; UN Partition Plan;
p. 81, Israeli Declaration of Independence;
p. 83, UN G.A. Res. 194;
p. 87, Israeli Law of Return;
p. 116, UN Resolution 242;
p. 117, PLO Charter
TBA
Wednesday, April 30, 2014, 5:30pm
“The Jewish Dilemma with Jewish Sovereignty:
Antisemitism at home and Abroad”
Instructor: Stephen Schecter
(Sociologist, Writer, Performance Artist)
6 TBA:
Israel in the Middle East, II (1993-2013)
Instructor: Prof. David Bensoussan (Engineering, L’UQAM)
REQUIRED READINGS:
– Bard, M.G. Myths and Facts, rev. ed. Chapters 18 to 23
– Ron Rosenbaum, ed., Those Who Forget The Past (2004)
– Martin Peretz “The Poet and the Murderer”
– David Mamet “The Power of Blunt Nostalgia”
– Daniel Gordis “Take Off That Mask”
– Ruth Wisse Jews and Power “Prologue”
7. TBA :
CONCLUDING SIAP ROUNDTABLE:
ISRAEL & GLOBAL ISSUES ON CAMPUS , 2013 & BEYOND
Instructors: Profs. David Bensoussan, Julien Bauer, Frederick Krantz,
David Pariser, Ira Robinson, Harold Waller